


Limited Options

by anythingbutblue



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1487227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutblue/pseuds/anythingbutblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cally loves Chief.  Chief loves Cally.  That's not all there is to it, but there are times when that's enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limited Options

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lls_mutant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lls_mutant/gifts).



“Hey, Chief,” Starbuck piped up, raising her cup like she was toasting. “This is your best batch. What'd you do? Leave out the engine grease?”

The back-handed compliment made him smile. “Added Viper jock sweat. Thought you'd like it.”

Cally had to marvel for a second over how strange it felt to grin with an open mouth, a laugh at the back of her throat. There was no doubt in her mind that it'd take less time to get used to being able to open her mouth again than it took for her to get used to having it wired shut.

Her arm bumped Chief's, and she'd have been lying if she'd said it wasn't on purpose. “We should make labels for your brew. Sell it to all those happy New Capricans.”

“I'd be rich,” Chief laughed. “If anybody had any money.”

“They could pay you in favors.”

The suggestion brought another grin to his face. “Listen to you. Maybe you should've gone into business.” His arm curled around her shoulders, and she liked it there.

She always had.

He'd been so good to her since the accident, and that's how she had to think of it: an _accident_. It didn't seem like the most accurate term for it – she definitely earned a questioning look or two when she said it out loud – but after four years of working by his side she felt like she knew Galen Tyrol. She knew he could be quick to anger sometimes, but he was a good man. A loyal man. A good mechanic and a good friend and a good leader. He cared about people.

He cared about her.

*

Chief didn't have to check in on her any more. She was fine. She'd walked the entire road to recovery. Her jaw was fine, all signs of bruising were gone, and in all honesty she felt as good as it was possible to feel.

Better than she had at all since they found out the colonies had been nuked in one fell swoop.

“You know I forgave you, right?”

Sitting side-by-side with her on the floor of the observation deck, he raised an eyebrow in her direction. “I remember.”

Leaning sideways, she rested her shoulder against his. “So maybe it's time to forgive yourself.” She offered him her cup.

He took the cup and there was a smile on his face, but she could practically hear the unspoken skepticism behind his closed lips. 

“If I can do it, you can do it.”

A breath came out of him, half laugh and half exhale. “Cally, you forgave me easier than anyone. Don't think I'm not glad you did, but I don't think anyone in this fleet, myself included, would say I didn't deserve to have to work for that forgiveness.”

She wouldn't say she hadn't had momentary flairs of anger at him, usually when the painkillers wore off or she woke up wanting to yawn and her jaw met resistance, but she knew he didn't mean to do it. Even though she never knew him when he didn't have a thing for Sharon Valerii she'd always felt like she mattered to him. Always under his wing, always watching each other's backs. When she looked at him it occurred to her for the first time that the past two years had aged him. The delicate skin under his eyes was darker and crinkled more when she made him grin. His laugh came just as readily, but almost never as loudly.

“Well,” she finally said, confident in how firm her voice sounded, “we'll have to agree to disagree. I think you'd done enough to earn forgiveness before you even needed it.” Tipping further sideways, she leaned the side of her face against his shoulder. “And just to put things in perspective,” she reminded him, “I did shoot your girlfriend.”

He hadn't forgotten. He'd forgiven, she knew, because their friendship would've suffered a lot more if he hadn't, but he'd never forgotten any faster than her.

For a second he didn't say anything. He just lifted his hand and stroked her hair. “She was a Cylon.”

“You _loved_ her,” she heard herself pointing out, a reflex she almost regretted in the heartbeat that followed. “I know you did.”

“I didn't know what she _was_ ,” he protested, his voice making a valiant attempt at staying mild.

Angling her head, she looked up to meet his eyes. “Did that really make it any easier?”

He paused, his fingers in her hair, and it felt like admission enough.

She aimed a small smile at him. “It's okay. It's not like you could've known.”

“Yeah,” was all he said in response.

Sitting up, she took the opportunity to run her own hand through _his_ hair. “What do you think would happen if I kissed you?”

Eyes widening in surprise – but how surprised could he be, she had to wonder – he turned toward her. Even though he'd always been well inside her comfort zone, she suddenly felt a little bit like a tightrope-walker, further out on the wire than she'd been before.

Chief had always been someone who'd catch her if she fell, but what would he do with her after? If she kissed him would he smile and put her down with an affectionate pat on the head, or would he frakking kiss her back? She knew where they stood for a long time, but she wasn't sure she did any longer.

“I've never been good at predicting the future, Cally.” He smiled back at her. “In fact, I've been pretty bad at it. But you know what?” Smile broadening, he ducked his head until their foreheads nearly touched. “I think there's only one good way to find out.”

So maybe the stars surrounding them didn't suddenly part to show the way to Earth, but it was still good when her lips met his.

*

Under the wing of Kat's newly repaired Viper, Cally spotted the perfect place to take a break. Chief sat there with a clipboard balanced on one knee, and she grinned, smug as a cat, as she dropped down beside him and maneuvered her head into his lap.

He moved the clipboard so it wouldn't bump her head. “Didn't get enough work to do?”

Eyes closed, she knew her grin was just getting bigger. “You're next on my list.”

“Oh,” he said in mock surprise, and she could hear stark amusement in his voice. “Well, as much as I hate to keep a pretty woman waiting, I've got one more report to fill out after this one.”

“Don't mind me,” she told him generously. “I've got nowhere to be.”

“Been quiet around here.”

“Nice and quiet,” she agreed, eyes still closed. It sounded like he was flipping to the next page on his clipboard. “I could get used to it.”

“Couldn't we all,” he agreed dryly, but she felt his fingertip poke tip of her nose. When she opened her eyes he was smiling down at her. “It's only gonna get quieter.”

It was a gift of an opening for the elephant he couldn't possibly know was in the hangar, and if there was ever a good time to break news that may have been it. She found herself, for once, unable to get the words out. It's funny how the night before she was sure she should tell him and get it over with and be upfront about everything, but as she looked up into his smiling face she kind of wanted to clam up and pretend everything was normal. “Nothing but CAPs and routine upkeep.”

“You could go down to New Caprica and open a dental practice.”

She had to laugh. “Yeah, I've got a feeling I'd be put on construction duty down there.”

He ruffled her hair, making her blow her bangs out of her face. “Better construction duty or routine upkeep than fighting Cylons every other day.”

“I could look smoking in a hard hat,” she suggested, eyebrows up, and he rewarded her with another grin, this one wider, making him look a whole nuclear holocaust younger.

“I think you would,” he agreed.

She couldn't take that grin away from him. At least not until after taking Cottle's paternity test.

*

After ten days of what felt like the worst kind of cowardice she finally looked at herself in the mirror and admitted defeat. She wasn't sleeping well, she wasn't _thinking_ well, and how much longer could she go without anyone noticing that she'd stopped drinking or that she'd no longer indulge in a puff whenever a friend had a cigarette?

When she closed her locker and turned around she was startled to see Galen peeking through the hatch at her.

“Hey.” He almost sounded timid.

“Hey.”

“I was just--” He shrugged. “Thinking, which is probably not something I should do after hours, but is something wrong? Between us?”

“No.” Making sure her locker was closed, she crossed the room toward him and put her hands on his shoulders. “I think it's kind of the opposite.”

“Okay.” He nodded once, slowly, and then gave her a pointed smile. “Then you want to talk to me, you motherfrakker?”

Her laugh sounded sheepish, she knew. Her hands lingered on his shoulders. What happened with Hot Dog hadn't come with built-in stipulations about how they'd act after or whether they'd ever have sex again, and maybe she'd just gotten lucky with the way it shook out but in the weeks that followed they'd been just as friendly as they ever were. She got the impression he wouldn't have minded doing it again, but he'd never been a priority over her job or her closest friends or... Chief.

If she sat them both down and told them the truth it'd just introduce a whole lot of awkwardness that none of them would ever need.

“I'm pregnant.” She sucked in a breath, lifting her chin, and it felt so good to say it out loud that she kept right on going, watching the acknowledgment play out across his face. “And I'm gonna keep it. I'm gonna raise this kid and love the frak out of it and try to give it the best life it can possibly have on a battlestar.”

Or maybe she could even go down to New Caprica and start a new life, her and the kid. Wouldn't that be better? This was a ship built for war, not raising families.

“Don't you want me to do something?”

“Do you _want_ to do something?”

He looked at her as though she'd broken out into a song-and-dance number in front of him. “I'm just saying that I should help you out. That's--” For a second he seemed at a loss. “I'll be a father. I owe it to this baby – and to you – to take some responsibility.” His hands met her belly, flattening against it like there was the slightest chance of feeling anything at this early stage in the game. “Gods, Cally,” he laughed his disbelief, “what the frak.”

“I didn't even know if you'd want a family with me,” she offered, as if it was an explanation.

“And I hadn't spent much time thinking about that yet,” he admitted just as hastily, his face revealing that he wasn't sure it was the right thing to say, “but--”

“But it's _my_ decision to keep it.”

He lifted both hands between them, half shield and half gesture of ultimate innocence. “Hey, you're the one it's renting space from until it's born.”

She couldn't resist smiling. “You're damn right I am.”

Tugging her into his arms, he held her close, his chin resting against her temple. “We make a pretty good team, you know. We'll do this together.”

*

The first time Galen said he loved her she wasn't sure how much of it was colored by whatever obligation he felt to her and the baby growing inside her, but somehow it seemed kind of fair – or maybe just mutually unfair in a satisfying way – that the first time she'd let him know definitively how she felt she was defending him from himself, taking up for him even with her jaw wired shut.

She'd probably do it all over again, but she could understand how intense and strange and undeserving it might have felt to him. He didn't shy away after. He treated her like the most special person in his life, even though she never would've suspected she really was.

Special, yes, but not the most special. Sometimes she suspected she wasn't the most special here either, even if it was only because they now had a helpless baby boy in their lives. Galen loved Nicky – she could tell – and she was only sorry she couldn't see him take to fatherhood in a normal way. In a world without Cylons lurking around every corner.

“Hey, you.” Galen's voice came from the entrance to their tent, and in record time he stood by Nicky's bed, holding their son in his arms like a prize. “Did you two miss me?”

The baby's gurgles were cute, but he wasn't much of a conversationalist, as she well knew, and he had a long way to go before he got any better at it. She thought he was doing pretty well getting by on his cherubic good looks.

“ _I_ missed you,” she offered quietly, sidling up to them and curling an arm around her husband's waist. “I can't speak for Nicky, though. He sees a lot of faces, and he has most of them wrapped around his little finger.”

“Not the metal ones, though.”

“No,” she agreed, all hint of humor gone. “Not the metal ones.”

As he put Nicky down, she let her arm fall to her side. “I'm glad you're back.”

There was a hint of something reproachful in his eyes when he turned to face her, but he held his hands out to her in invitation. “Of course I'm back.”

 _Galen, don't_ , she wanted to say. _Don't pretend they haven't taken people, killed people, tortured people. Don't pretend you don't have a target on your back because you're with the resistance. Don't pretend you and Sam aren't planning to put your lives in direct danger._

She hated feeling conflicted about it: she couldn't be prouder of him for taking every possible stand against the Cylons, but at the same time she wanted to know that he'd be home at night, that if she and Nicky were taken from their tent it wouldn't take him all day to notice, that they'd be his top priority when and if the worst-case scenario collided with reality.

She put her hands in his, allowing him to draw her in and turn her around so they could both face Nicky, and then he wrapped his arms around her shoulders in exactly the type of warm embrace he was always so good at. “I won't let anything happen to him. I won't let anything happen to _you_.”

It was something he believed so much it almost sounded like a fact.

Nicky wriggled in his bed, his mouth expressive, one foot kicking at the air. “Look at him,” she marveled. “You'd swear he's having a great time. He looks so content.”

“Must be nice to be small,” Galen said into her ear.

Her mouth wanted to curve into a smile. “Must be.”


End file.
